Fight Night Round 3 immerses you into a quite realistic modeling of boxing. The character models are impressive, down to sweat streaks on their bodies.

If someone walked into the room while you were playing a game, they might think for a second that they were watching an actual fight. The movements of the characters are impressive. The level of details on their faces and bodies - from the veins in their arms to the ripple of muscles on their stomach - was done with great attention.

You also get good quality voice acting from the commentator.

Now, that being said, my biggest issue is with the controls. The controls here are to use a joystick and to sweep it in the direction your first is going to go. So if you want your right fist to come sweeping around from the right to hit the guy's face, you use your joystick to go right and then forward.

But in practice I found that I could be telling the controller to do right jab - right jab - right jab and that randomly a left hook would throw in there. And there's no way to aim for the head vs the body.

I think a bit issue is that I have motion-based boxing games that I adore. I throw a left hook with my arm and the on-screen character mimics me perfectly. I *love* that. To try to do that type of action with a joystick just doesn't work. Both in a technical sense and in a visceral sense.

Also, the beautiful character modeling comes at a high price. The load screens are often interminable. Moving between screens can take quite a while.

I think if there were't other options out there, and this was the only boxing game around, that I would play it. It's pretty to look at. It does provide a boxing experience. But with all the other games I can choose from, which are enormously fun to play, I just don't have a reason to pop this into the PS3 and then wait for it to eventually get me into a match.

Rating: 3/5

I purchased this game with my own funds in order to write this review.